You might have realised by now that this isn’t the place for cupcakes and kittens. I found an x-ray of a hand on google images and fed it through my app-du-jour, Kooleido. The results look like something out of a Buzby Berkeley musical, (which featured kaleidoscopic aerial shots of formation swimming teams and feathery chorus girls.) I wonder if Buzby teamed up with Tim Burton or H R Giger (who designed Ridley Scott’s Alien) would it look something like this?
Sigur Rós – Ekki múkk from Sigur Rós on Vimeo.
It’s the sound of wordless beauty, of dark majesty and joy. You’re probably hearing the future of classical music being crafted here and now. When I listen to Sigur Rós, the hairs on my neck stand up. There’s a warm intimacy to the way many tracks start, with the delicate ticking and scratching of life. But like the slow start of a roller coaster, a vast cinematic groundswell of emotion can rise beneath you and steal your breath. Somewhere between celebration and mourning, the choruses are often chaotic, subsiding in slow motion leaving you dazed, like you swam to shore in a storm. This is music which climbs out of the speakers and goes places.
I was researching audio plugins on WordPress when I came across 8tracks, so I thought I’d give it a go. It’s a bit like hosting your own radio station, but really more like an online playlist. Imagine a 70s cop show, car chases and platform boots. Like, freak out, man.
Last week I showed you my oil painting, Blue Man and this week I fed the image through Kooleido, a kaleidoscope app on my iPhone. I love the religious overtones of mandala-style psychedelic images, and I’ve found the movement of a kaleidoscope quite hypnotic (Believe! Believe!) The result is almost like Dutch Delft ceramic tiles, although with sprawling knots of naked men. Imagine that…
Blue Man by Mark Wallis, 1999 oil on canvas. Click on image to enlarge
Oil paint is the most fantastic medium, versatile and rugged. The smell of linseed oil, the rolling of sleeves and the dirtying of hands are my idea of painting. Mistakes can be moved or wiped and the colours can be propelled around the canvas with as much passion or restraint as you like. Most artists I speak to are afraid to use them, but the rich, deep colours last for ever and the results speak for themselves.
Blue Man was my first attempt at painting in oils, and although it’s 13 years old I’m very proud of it. That and the fact that it sold before it was even completed. It’s a bold image which reflects how I felt at the time which was a bit frayed around the edges, and like early Hockney I based the painting on a photograph from an adult magazine. This particular image appealed to me enormously as it smashed the myth of men and their emotions. To see a big strong man in such a vulnerable pose was enigmatic and inspirational.
I still can’t do feet…
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© My artwork, photography and music are copyright Mark Wallis 2015
You may download and save my material but not redistribute without clear credit or a link back to The Vibes.
Music mixes containing copyright material owned by others are included here under Creative Commons License and no infringement is intended.
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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